Virginia Foxx: ongoing work to support the u.s. merchant marine, and i strongly support the bill and ask all members to do the same. and at this point five minutes to our colleague from north carolina, virginia foxx. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from north carolina

Virginia Foxx: is recognized for five minutes. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. and i want to thank my colleague, mr. petri, for yielding me some time. when i was going over the bills for this week, this bill sort of flew out at me. it seems like a very innocuous bill like motherhood and apple pie, the kind of thing that we

Virginia Foxx: should be doing here. we know that there are a lot o people needed in the maritime industry. i visited the merchant marine academy last year, had a wonderful visit there and was told by the administrators there that there's huge demand for their graduates, that they have about so job offers for

Virginia Foxx: every graduate, and that we need more people who have excellent education and training in the maritime field. however, this bill i think is not doing what we would like for it to do, and it raises more questions, i think, than it answers. i have -- i've asked some of

Virginia Foxx: the questions of the staff and i don't get the kind of a that think we need to be getting. i'm very ken on our having accountability for any way that we authorize or spend money, and there's really no accountability in this bill at all. there's no statement of the demand.

Virginia Foxx: it says that there -- there were 162,000 jobs in the u.s. water transportation sector, up in 2006, up from nearly jobs recorded in 2002. and it says in the summer there's a perceived future shortage of workers, not an

Virginia Foxx: actual one. so, you know, we're going to authorize a program for a perceived need. the headlines out this week are that our military has gone way beyond its goals in recruiting people. and i suspect that with unemployment as high as it is right now, many, many people

Virginia Foxx: are going programs trying to get the kind of licenses they ned to get jobs. again, this bill doesn't present that information. it doesn't say that there are people being turned away from these state programs that are helping these people get the skills they need. it doesn't tell how many people are being turned away from the

Virginia Foxx: merchant marine academy. i am very much concerned that this program is going to be a lot like a program that was funned in 2004 with an earmark requested by david price which gave $10 million in the federal budget to a program at u.n.c. chapel hill for a neeffort to help deployed soldiers of the

Virginia Foxx: national guard, army and reserve. an article has said five years later the citizen-soldier support program has spent $7.3 million but the money has accomplished little for the people it was supposed to help. and, mr. speaker, if possible, i'd like to enter into the record the complete article that i'm referencesing. the speaker pro tempore:

Virginia Foxx: without objection. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. it goes on to say that an internal review found that the program produced reams of papwork but few concrete because there's no accountability in this bill, we're giving a huge discretion to the secretary to handle this money.

Virginia Foxx: we're not outlining the kinds of things that we as congress should be outlining. we are t demanding any kind of results from the money that's being spent. and it's a lot of money. it's $110 million over 2010 to 2014, $22 million in 2014. there's a program to give $10

Virginia Foxx: million to -- for grants to maritime training institutions to establish demonstration projects and other programs increase mariner recruitment, training and retention. no evidence tha need to be out there. again, we don't know how many people are already applying for such pgrams. this money also is going to be

Virginia Foxx: available to unions, to community action groups such as acorn. it's going to very nebulous groups of people and i have a great concern, again, how we're going to have any accountability from this program. we in congress have an obligation to make sure that any money that we're spending